OMG! 10.4.8 = 100FPS INCREASE in WOW!!!

[MacProGuy]

I know I'm just sitting here... not doing anything... but if you look at my previous WOW benchmarks... in the Lion's Pride Inn ... just sitting there... no action... I was getting about 166FPS...

But after the 10.4.8 update, same resolution, same settings, I am getting this FPS in the same Lion's Pride Inn...

I guess the Open GL optimizations were correct!

Holy Crap Batman!

 

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Ahhhhhhhh

Stop making me even more anxious for my new 24'' iMac! /drool.

 

[MacProGuy]

Ahhhhhhhh

Stop making me even more anxious for my new 24'' iMac! /drool.

LOL... now... before people start getting all crazy on me... outside in normal conditions, everything on (close to it) 1x FSAA I'm getting 70-80FPS...

An interesting side note: 4X FSAA didn't get me much of a slow down at all before... but NOW, after the latest WOW patch and 10.4.8, if I enable 4xFSAA instead of 1XFSAA I'm only getting 30FPS outside... wonder if a bug got introduced... or if they are finally actually REALLY turning on the 4xFSAA... maybe there was a bug before where 4xFSAA wasn't really 4xFSAA, hence there wasn't much of a performance hit?

Also... to put the power of this card relative to the x1600...

If I drop the resolution of the 7600GT down to 1600x1200, that same 200+ FPS shot gets me 320-340FPS.

 

[MacProGuy]

And here is that same shot at 1600x1000 (or whatever it is) ... basically the 20" iMac Resolution...

Damn... I REALLY wish Apple would have put the 7600GT in the 20" iMac as an Option... THAT would be even better than the 24"... as it is obvious that the Video Card would benefit from not being stressed out by having to run 1920x1200...

I also noticed that... at lower resolutions... the game is CPU LIMITED (i.e., the graphics card is WAYYYY over powered for the CPU)... because going from 1600x1000 to the lowest resolution (900x600 something or other) didn't really gain much in terms of FPS... only jumped up about 10FPS or so...

Which tells me that at lower resolutions, the game is CPU BOUND, not Graphics Bound... and the sweet spot between too high a resolution and not enough CPU is really the 1600x1000 range...

I suppose we aren't really ever happy... *sigh*.

Although... I will admit that I can't see much blurring at this resolution... so really... if a game wasn't fast enough... downscaling to 1600x1000 or whatever would be an acceptable option, at least for me

 

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Damn... I REALLY wish Apple would have put the 7600GT in the 20" iMac as an Option... THAT would be even better than the 24"... as it is obvious that the Video Card would benefit from not being stressed out by having to run 1920x1200...

If I remember right, the 20'' iMac also has more 'concentrated' pixels. (I can probably verify this by doing some simple math, but it's nearly 4AM.) So, it would look... crisper, I think?

I just noticed that you play a gnome.

Yeech.

 

[MacProGuy]

If I remember right, the 20'' iMac also has more 'concentrated' pixels. (I can probably verify this by doing some simple math, but it's nearly 4AM.) So, it would look... crisper, I think?

I just noticed that you play a gnome.

Yeech.

Hey, I play a Gnome for my little 5 year old angel who plays with me... I'm allowed a Daddy Exemption...

And you are right. This same resolution on the 20" would be more compact, and native, and look even better at the same speed increase!

 

[Nermal]

On the other hand, I have noticed no difference whatsoever (17" Core 1 iMac with 1.5 GB).

Edit: I'm an idiot, I had the frame limiter on

 

[nagromme]

LOL... now... before people start getting all crazy on me... outside in normal conditions, everything on (close to it) 1x FSAA I'm getting 70-80FPS...

Only 70-80fps at high-definition resolutions? Sounds like plenty to me!

 

[Chrispy]

I'm going to have to get back into WoW after I get my new PC built. I have a 7600 going into that system alongside a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of DDR2 memory. All running on a 20" widescreen Samsung LCD monitor. Before I was always limited to 25-30 FPS due to running the game on laptops. It will be nice to have the game running at the monitor native res with lighting effects enabled. Thanks for the numbers!

 

[MacProGuy]

I'm going to have to get back into WoW after I get my new PC built. I have a 7600 going into that system alongside a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of DDR2 memory. All running on a 20" widescreen Samsung LCD monitor. Before I was always limited to 25-30 FPS due to running the game on laptops. It will be nice to have the game running at the monitor native res with lighting effects enabled. Thanks for the numbers!

Ahhhh... Sadly, you'll still be limited to 60fps on the PC. Even on this machine, in Windows XP, WOW only gets 64FPS no matter what you do.

This is a core-duo CPU bug ... Blizzard blames Intel, Intel blames Microsoft, Microsoft is clueless... and hence the bug doesn't get fixed... lol

But yeah, it will be smoooth

 

[Chrispy]

60 FPS would be cool to me. As long as it actually runs smooth for once I will be very pleased

 

[carfac]

Hi:

Not a gamer... so I do not understand. Why would ou want anything over 60 fps? That is the refresh rate on the monitor, right? So isn't anything greater than 60, uh, lost?

d

 

[dmw007]

Quite the boost in performance from Mac OS X 10.4.7 to 10.4.8!

 

[26139]

Well...

Hi:

Not a gamer... so I do not understand. Why would ou want anything over 60 fps? That is the refresh rate on the monitor, right? So isn't anything greater than 60, uh, lost?

d

I don't even think the human eye can discern much past 60 fps...

Oh, and for the record, there's only a refresh rate on CRTs, not LCDs.

 

[carfac]

Oh, and for the record, there's only a refresh rate on CRTs, not LCDs.

Am I showing my age??? Damn! LCD's do not refrsh... I did not know that- thanks!

I don't even think the human eye can discern much past 60 fps...

And thus the point of my original question... sure it gives you bragging rights or whatever, but it does not really matter, right????

You can fake good, fluid motion down to about 18 fps in film, but that is about the limit. For what it's worth, film uses a rotating shutter, so 18 is really "spilt" up to 36 fps... so that is I think the real limit. 24 fps (which is shown at an appearant 48) is fluid enough for a century of films....

dave

 

[Chrispy]

Why does my LCD show its refresh rate in the settings area if they don't have a refresh rate?

 

[4JNA]

...for the record, there's only a refresh rate on CRTs, not LCDs.

not quite true... LCDs have 'response time' and you will notice in the spec sheets that the 'max refresh rate' goes up as the pixel 'response time' goes down. some of the fast 4ms monitors are now up to 85khz and higher.

no idea on the apple panel specs though...

 

[[G5]Hydra]

The shot you show on 10.4.7 has the onscreen menu up. Doesn't that drop the fps? What happens in 10.4.8 if you put that menu up like in your first posted screenshot? To the best of my knowledge the Mac Pro was and still is the only Mac shipping with Multithreaded GL. WoW also needs to be patched to use it and I am not sure they have released that patch yet.

-Jerry C.

 

[MacProGuy]

The shot you show on 10.4.7 has the onscreen menu up. Doesn't that drop the fps? What happens in 10.4.8 if you put that menu up like in your first posted screenshot? To the best of my knowledge the Mac Pro was and still is the only Mac shipping with Multithreaded GL. WoW also needs to be patched to use it and I am not sure they have released that patch yet.

-Jerry C.

Well, something has to account for the difference?

 

[26139]

Yes, but...

not quite true... LCDs have 'response time' and you will notice in the spec sheets that the 'max refresh rate' goes up as the pixel 'response time' goes down. some of the fast 4ms monitors are now up to 85khz and higher.

no idea on the apple panel specs though...

Yeah, but refreshing on an LCD isn't quite the same as is it on a CRT, either...

 

[MacProGuy]

You can fake good, fluid motion down to about 18 fps in film, but that is about the limit. For what it's worth, film uses a rotating shutter, so 18 is really "spilt" up to 36 fps... so that is I think the real limit. 24 fps (which is shown at an appearant 48) is fluid enough for a century of films....

dave

Please, Please, PLEASE stop confusing the two. Gaming FPS and Movie/TV/FILM FPS are NOT the same thing.

60Fields per second is the spec for 720p, so obviously 60FPS is the STARTING POINT.

Now, the DIFFERENCE HERE is that in FILM, and TV... each field is slightly blurred... so everything SEEMS FLUID!

In games, NOTHING IS BLURRED... everything is rendered (each frame) exactly as it is to be displayed. While the naked eye may not be able to see more FPS, and the monitor might not be able to display it (technically)... it WILL display the combination of the fields (FPS) which will give each frame a little blur (180FPS = 3 Fields at once... slight blur)... similar to a regular SINGLE MOVIE FRAME...

And will thus make the game appear much more smooth!

 

[[G5]Hydra]

Well, something has to account for the difference?

That is why I asked if the fps goes down when the menu is onscreen. The only screenshot you posted that shows 10.4.7 has the menu onscreen, all your other screen shots of 10.4.8 have no menus up. The onscreen menu could kill fps, who knows. Put the menu up on a 10.4.8 with WoW running and post a screenshot of the fps before and after.

-Jerry C.

 

[amholl]

how do u show the FPS on the screen?

 

[phytonix]

i don't think i experienced boost of performance..

 

[joeblough]

the quote below is complete nonsense.

first of all, its 60 FRAMES/sec for 720p, not fields. a field would be just the even scan lines or odd scan lines of a frame. we refer to fields when speaking of interlaced video and frames when speaking of progressive video. also, if by "spec for 720p" you mean ATSC, or digital television, i've got news for you. 720p@24fps is also a legal size/frame rate for ATSC. 60p isnt really the starting point for anything, its just another legal framerate.

film is by nature softer than video, but bluriness of film or video is not done to make the video seem smoother. in fact, film is usually shot at 24p and the human eye can actually perceive motion artifacts at this framerate.

LCDs are not magic. the computer sends the framebuffer data to the LCD once every so many milliseconds. just because its not a CRT does not mean that the computer can transfer data to the screen infinitely fast.

yes, the application may be able to put data into the framebuffer at some ridiculous rate. but if you dont synchronize the framebuffer updates with the video refresh rate, you get tearing, as some parts of the monitor have data from one frame, and others have different data.

i'm not aware of any video cards that average multiple frames before finally outputting the data to the monitor, as suggested below.

Please, Please, PLEASE stop confusing the two. Gaming FPS and Movie/TV/FILM FPS are NOT the same thing.

60Fields per second is the spec for 720p, so obviously 60FPS is the STARTING POINT.

Now, the DIFFERENCE HERE is that in FILM, and TV... each field is slightly blurred... so everything SEEMS FLUID!

In games, NOTHING IS BLURRED... everything is rendered (each frame) exactly as it is to be displayed. While the naked eye may not be able to see more FPS, and the monitor might not be able to display it (technically)... it WILL display the combination of the fields (FPS) which will give each frame a little blur (180FPS = 3 Fields at once... slight blur)... similar to a regular SINGLE MOVIE FRAME...

And will thus make the game appear much more smooth!